“I am not so optimistic in terms of the settlement of the Karabakh conflict,” yesterday said RA president Robert Kocharyan in answer to questions after his speech at Alexander Institute of Helsinki. He said that if we pay attention to the draft that has been under discussion, it may seem that most of the job has been done. He also highlighted that the principal disagreement in terms of the conflict were connected mainly with 3-4 issues, a part of which, according to the president, are technical issues, which may bee agreed upon. However, according to president Kocharyan the competition of arming, the announcements from the other side, the ongoing threats are creating an imagination that two different drafts are being discussed. “It is driving the process to different directions – on the one hand the document is being slowly developed to a certain point, on the other hand all what is happening in the reality is totally different. This is the reason why I am not so much optimistic,” said the Armenian president. According to him, there is an opportunity of phasic settlement of the issue, but it can happen in the implementation process. “There should not be preconditions, for instance, such as returning the territories and then discussing the issue of the status. There should be a totally agreed draft, the solution of which components may be delayed for some technical, political, objective and subjective reasons. The issue of the territories is a part of the draft too, but not all of them. One of the proposals of Armenia is that Nagorno Karabakh should have land connection with Armenia since it is clear that the enclave existence of Karabakh is not possible,” he said.
Answering to a question whether there is any connection between the conflicts of South Caucasus the RA president said that the general connection is the fact that the conflicts are a result of the collapse of the Soviet Union and generally the collapse of the socialistic field. Such processes, as a rule, are happening during global changes. “I believe that the settlements of those conflicts are not connected with each other, however I think that their settlement will result less problems than delaying or freezing them,” said president Kocharyan and added that there is an approach, according to which if one of the existing conflicts is resolved, for instance the conflict of Kosovo, it may result some chain reaction. “I just believe that the certain number of conflicts which could have been existing is existing already, just we have to think about their normal and understandable settlement. There is no direct connection between them,” concluded R. Kocharyan.
